Technology

Operating in a new era

Technology is a multifaceted, influential and fluid industry whose executives must manage the art of being agile while focusing on operational excellence and meeting greater consumer demand. Our worldwide team of industry-focused assurance, tax, transaction and advisory professionals has the deep sector knowledge and technical experience to interpret the market and help you compete powerfully.

The IT services now known as cloud computing have been around for decades, but they never grew beyond a small fraction of total industry revenue. Now, however, their time has come: over the past few years, a dizzying array of hardware and software available as services over the internet has emerged.

Consumers and businesses have embraced a multitude of cloud services, from mature sales force management services to email and photo editing to the latest smartphone applications and the entire social networking phenomenon. Further, researchers project an imminent inflection point in the adoption of cloud services by organizations both large and small.

As cloud adoption becomes widespread, its characteristic of enhancing business agility is likely to lead to an increasing pace of change for all industries worldwide. Adding fuel to the interest in cloud computing is that cloud services advance “green” agendas: they allow fuller utilization of shared infrastructure capacity, thus consuming less power and lowering the carbon footprints of their users versus alternative IT approaches.

Related content

Some organizations are creating a presence on social networks to promote products and services and to communicate directly with their customers.

But when an organization creates a profile for this purpose, how does it define and communicate its privacy practices for the information it collects?

And how should employees who communicate with customers on an individual basis use the additional personal information available to them from their customers’ profile?

These are all questions companies using social networks as a sales or promotion tool should be asking.

Organizations also need to be aware that social media sites can be abused for fraud purposes and that the information that is collected by the site is not in the control of the organization and will likely end up “living” longer than the organization intends or expects.

Policies and training are key

It is important that organizations develop and communicate thoughtful policies that address interactions among customers, employees and job candidates.

Merely disabling social network use in the workplace is not a sustainable solution

The reliance on these policies is especially paramount in an environment where regulatory requirements do not easily align with technology and its common uses. Awareness campaigns and training must accompany the policy changes.

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